


dollhouse

by LydiaOfNarnia



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Gen, Little Sisters, M/M, Meet the Family, Nixon Family Values, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 03:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11706189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydiaOfNarnia/pseuds/LydiaOfNarnia
Summary: Someone is waiting for them when they get off the train.There is a woman standing on the platform, cutting a striking figure amidst the bustle of working class women and worn down parents. It's clear exactly who she's looking for. As the train screeches to a halt, her rapt gaze is locked on their compartment; more specifically, on Nix's face."I take it that's not your driver," Dick comments sideways to Nix, and his best friend smiles.





	dollhouse

**Author's Note:**

> i just have a lot of feelings about blanche nixon and lewis nixon's family in general bc wow what a trainwreck
> 
> Of course, the characters in this fic are based off of their fictional portrayals from the miniseries Band of Brothers, and I mean no disrespect to the real-life veterans!
> 
> Find me on tumblr at [renelemaires](http://renelemaires.tumblr.com/)!

Someone is waiting for them when they get off the train.

There is a woman standing on the platform, cutting a striking figure amidst the bustle of working class women and worn down parents. The short sleeves of a fitted silk dress, legs clothed in flawless stockings. Her skirt hugs her waist, billowing out around her knees like a crimson cloud. Dark hair falls nearly to her shoulders in a loose wave, rounding out in curls at the ends. Her face is almost a mirror-image of the man standing next to Dick, with a few small discrepancies that manage to set her apart. Her forehead is broader, her skin a touch paler, her cheeks rogued and lips painted a bright red. She has the same eyes though -- dark, sharp, and intelligent. She is striking at first glance; at second, she could easily be called beautiful. It's clear exactly who she's looking for. As the train screeches to a halt, her rapt gaze is locked on their compartment; more specifically, on Nix's face.

"I take it that's not your driver," Dick comments. He glances over at Nix, and finds himself taken aback. There is a new light in his friend's eyes, one that Dick hasn't seen for a long time. The spark of recognition -- relief, like returning home after a long journey -- is an ember kindled anew. Dick hadn't been certain he'd ever see Nix look this way again. Now, standing in the middle of the train compartment and gazing out the window, he sees years melt from his friend’s face in an instant. He looks boyish, more energized than he has since they first jumped into war. That expression makes Dick’s heart soar.

“Not my driver,” Nix replies, a smile already on his lips. “Someone even better, believe it or not.”

He follows Nix off the train, trailing two steps behind. The woman’s entire posture is tense as they step onto the platform, like a bird ready to take flight. Nix heads straight for her, spreading his arms wide, and she goes loose like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

"Well, look who it is!” Nix exclaims. A peal of laughter escapes the woman as she rushes forwards, burying herself in his arms. He spins her around. Her heeled feet leaving the ground for just a moment before she is set back down, breathless and grinning. The unbridled smile on her pretty face is a perfect echo of Nix’s own.

“What, you thought I'd hang you out to dry?” Her voice is smooth, but the edge of laughter to her tone makes her words pop like bubblegum. “You said you were coming in, someone had to meet you here. I figured you'd rather it be me than Marcel.”

The woman brandishes a set of keys, face glowing with pride. Nix takes a step back, surveying her.

"Surprised you’re still around here. I could have sworn you'd be settled in Hollywood by now. Don't tell me -- they sent you back. No use for a knockoff Joan Crawford, huh?"

The woman aims a punch that connects soundly with Nix's shoulder. He doesn't flinch; Dick does it for them.

“As if Mama and Papa Nixon would really let their baby girl run off to join the movie business. Just for that, I’m not driving you home.”

“I'm terrified of you driving me anywhere.” Despite his words, fondness still curls Nix’s lips, and his hand finds the her shoulder almost as if by instinct. When he turns to Dick, the woman’s attention moves with him. “Dick, allow me to introduce my one and only sister. Blanche, this is Richard Winters.”

“The one you spoke to Dad about,” Blanche says. It isn't a question. Her eyes scan Dick for one long moment, taking in every detail about him in a single second. A beat later, the full force of her smile is trained on him.

(Dick _knows_ that smile. It's the same one that Nix, when putting his best effort into being affable and mostly sober, employs to great effect. It doesn't lose any of its magnetic charm on her sharper features.)

“So you're Dick, then,” she says, seizing his hand almost before he can offer it. “It's nice to meet you! Lewis spoke a lot about you when he called. It's great to finally meet the myth in person.”

“I hope he didn't talk me up that much.” Dick feels inexplicably flustered beneath Blanche’s attention. He's never had a way with women, never manipulated Nix’s charm or Talbert’s ease. He also cringes under the light of praise.

“Nothing that isn't true,” Nix replies. Dick’s eyes flicker up to him, and the look on his friend’s face does wonders to soothe his nerves. He trusts Nix; they share the same disdain for excessive praise, especially when it's unearned. Nix would never inflate his reputation to his family just to give Dick a good name.

“Relax,” Blanche drawls, still smiling as she releases Dick’s hand. “You'll be welcome here. The both of you. You've still got to meet Stan, of course, and he'll be the real one you want to impress. I'm just the welcoming committee.”

“And the chauffeur,” Nix adds, nodding to the keys still gripped between her fingers. She throws a wink over her shoulder at him.

“The most exciting chauffeur in the country. Not to mention the best looking!”

Blanche is a step up from the drivers of their military jeeps, that's for sure. As she turns and begins to make her way off the platform, Dick doesn't hesitate to follow in her footsteps. He only pauses once it dawns on him that Nix isn't right behind him.

He looks back at his friend, eyebrows raised in question, only to find Nix still standing on the platform. He wears an odd look now, not like the relief from earlier. This is more melancholy, a sort of shock that stands out all the more on Nix’s usually intelligent face. It's not often that he'll admit to being thrown off guard, but this is clearly one of those moments.

“Nix?” Dick asks. The question doesn't jar his friend from his trance. Rather, Nix shakes his head, taking a step forward, his eyes still fixed on a point over Dick’s shoulder.

“She's grown up,” Nix mutters, like he's puzzled and impressed at the same time. “I guess she really has grown up.”

* * *

 

The realization that the Nixon siblings aren't all that different after all comes over Dick like a rolling tide -- slowly, then all at once.

The entire family is cut out of the same cloth. He recognizes that the moment he sees them together. Nix, for all his professed disdain for his father, is an echo of him in so many ways. They bear the same physique, the same mercurial temperament, right down to the wicked gleam in their eyes and love of the bottle. Lewis is truly Stanhope Nixon’s son.

Blanche is made of the same stuff, just as worn, just as quick to tear. She keeps the frays at her edges well-hidden, but she shares more with Lewis and her father besides their dark coloring. She loves the bite of alcohol just as much. She can be flippant, callous, venomous when pushed to it. There is a streak of wild, uncontrollable emotion in her too, one that Dick has never sensed in Nix, but that he can certainly see in their father.

Blanche is every inch the Nixon daughter. She's simply more attuned to softening her blunt edges, covering up her sharper ones. She is clever, she is charming, she banters and brags. When all is said and done, she drinks. A true Nixon, through and through.

Dick doesn't know how he's wound up here, alone in a drawing room, opposite a very drunk Blanche sprawled out on the divan. If he'd had his way, he would have left this party long before everyone else. Nix had insisted he stick around, however, and now Dick has no clue where he's gone. In his home territory, Nix can either move like a ghost or a king; he is masterful at both. He often vanishes, leaving Dick alone and with no idea how to find him.

“You look like a little lost puppy,” Blanche pipes up suddenly. When Dick startles, she laughs.

Dick knows he should reply, but can’t think of what to say. Blanche turns on her side, narrow glass balanced between her fingers, and narrows her eyes as she studies him. The purse of her lips make him uncomfortable. She doesn’t say anything, but he feels as if his thoughts are loud enough for the whole house to hear.

“You don’t know why you’re here, do you?” she finally says.

Her words give Dick pause. He’d be lying if he said it wasn’t a question he’s asked himself on occasion. In the handful of months since he took the job at Nixon Nitration, it has become blatantly obvious that he does not fit in with their cavalier, hard-partying lifestyle.

He reminds himself that he’s here for the job, but that’s not really true. He could just as easily have gone back to Lancaster and found work there. If he’s here for any one reason, it’s for the man who brought him here in the first place.  
Somehow he’s sure that Blanche already knows this, so he allows himself the honesty. “I’m here for Lewis.”

Blanche’s lips turn up -- a sad, joyless echo of a smile that Dick has seen too many times on her brother’s face. She exhales a sigh from deep in her chest. Her hair falls over the arm of the wine-colored divan in a raven cascade. “I haven't wanted to be an actress since I was eighteen.”

For a second, her words make little sense. Then Dick remembers the day at the train station, hears Nix’s words in her mind, and understands. Once again, he finds himself at a loss for words. “I'm sure he didn't know,” he manages after a moment.

“That's the point. He didn't know. It's been three years since he enlisted, and in that time, he never wrote. Not one letter. No a birthday card, no holiday well-wishes. Nothing.” Blanche’s laugh crackles through the air like static. She takes another sip from her glass. “He visited Kathy a few times. He had a kid with her. In all that time, he could _just_ be bothered to respond to her letters. But he never wrote me.”

Dick folds his hands in his lap and frowns down at them. He feels like a child being lectured by a disappointed parent, even though Blanche’s demeanor couldn’t be farther from that. There is a guilt that weighs on his own shoulders. He remembers Nix scoffing on his bunk at Toccoa, tossing aside letters from family unread. He avoided the topic of the ones he left behind as much as he could. Any letter he wrote in reply was like a labor to him, one he tried to shirk as much as possible.

Dick was always writing -- to his sister, his parents, friends, his host family in England. He can count on one hand the letters he saw Nix pen.

Should he have asked more questions? Should he have encouraged Nix to keep in better contact those three years?

Blanche’s face makes it clear that she doesn’t blame him. She just looks sad -- and bitter, a bit, not that Dick can blame him. She takes another drink, and her gaze drops to the glass. “He runs from things, you know. Because he's afraid -- because he's a coward. Because he doesn't want to face them. Because he's smarter than all of us. Who knows? He runs and he never stops running, but it's all the same. In the end, it's all the same old racetrack, going round and round without an end. We're just going in circles.”

Dick opens his mouth, unsure of what to say, but closes it again when he suddenly finds her looking at him. Her gaze is sharp and sober, like a pistol trained at his chest.

“If you have to run,” she says, “run. This isn't your place. Don't force yourself to be anything for him. It's not worth it, believe me.”

“I - I won’t --” Dick stammers. His mind flashes through countless parties he’s sat in on just because Nix asked him to, and he can’t help wondering if that’s just what he’s been doing.

Blanche sighs. “This world is small. It spins around, and around, and there's no getting off for either of us. Don't trap yourself here if you can help it.”

They don’t say anything more after that. Dick is captured by her thoughts; Blanche is captured by her drink. Nix does not return to the room, but Dick stays and waits until he hears Blanche’s empty glass thud against the carpeted floor. When he looks up, her head is bowed towards her chest. She is asleep.

She is petite, so that makes carrying her to her room easily. Dick lays her on her bed and fails to shake her awake. In the end, he removes her shoes and tucks her in before slipping out of the Nixon mansion, unseen and unnoticed.

The gilded carousel that is life in Nixon, New Jersey swirls through his mind throughout the dark drive home. He cannot unhear Blanche’s words. He cannot escape the itch in his own skin, which has risen to prominence in his consciousness after too long being ignored.

Early that morning, Nix stumbles into bed reeking of liquor, and Dick hears his sister’s warning echo in his head.


End file.
